Today I received an email to my University of Auckland email account (EC mail), one I use only for uni-based communications, that they are changing the provider from the unusual (assumedly) proprietary system to Google’s mail interface.
This is an exciting change, because the email web client is quite old, does not support html emails, has limited address book features, and is very poor at managing emails in folders. Hopefully the new EC webmail will be much better than the last!
It goes live on 9 July 2008, and the FAQs are here.
It would be great if the university directory (e.g. Lecturer’s email addresses) was accessible directly from the webmail interface, and if there was support for calendar with your timetable and lecturer’s office hours, assignment due dates, readings for a week, etc. All that information is put onto Cecil (Auckland’s enterprise learning tool) at some stage, so I it might as well be accessible from a tool that provides value. Perhaps even implementing Google docs for use in group assignments would be useful.
It’s very nice to see progress in this space… so often your spirit for the adoption of new technologies in large organisations is crushed by the bureaucracy in that organisation.
David Carr 